Since When Does a Topless Woman Reading The News Constitute Pornography?

Errol Naidoo of the Family Policy Institute in Cape Town has called on advertisers to boycott e.tv because of its naked news broadcasts. Chris Barron asked him …

We’ve got so much death and misery to contend with, and you’re getting steamed up about a naked woman reading news on TV?

When one considers the research I’ve done and the evidence around the world on pornography and its impact on women and children .

Since when does a topless woman reading the news constitute pornography?

It does, it does. People hooked on pornography .

Are you saying any nudity is pornographic?

When you put it on national, free-to-air television for children to see .

But this is late at night.

It doesn’t matter. We have evidence that children are watching it.

Then surely the parents are to blame, not the TV channel?

No, no, no. Parents have a responsibility, of course, to see that their children are not watching it, but we live in a real world where children are not always supervised. Parents go out and they leave children at home alone. There are dysfunctional parents.

Surely you should be more concerned about dysfunctional parents than a bit of nudity on TV?

You’re trying to minimise this thing. It’s not a bit of nudity, it’s a lot of nudity. It’s not only naked news it’s other porn movies that e.tv have consistently shown.

If children didn’t have nudity to watch on TV they might get up to something even more dangerous, like drugs. Isn’t that more of a threat?

Of course it is, and we’re dealing with that as well. We’ve done a lot of work with young adults who are addicted to pornography. And the kind of things they do is similar to when they’re addicted to cocaine. Stealing money from their parents, using their credit cards to go online, all kinds of things. It has a devastating effect on the life and emotions of young people. And if you ask how did it start, you know how it starts. With nudity. Like naked news, women stripping. They’re attracted to this, then after a while it doesn’t give them the same rush and they go onto something harder.

What about adults? Shouldn’t they have the right to watch what they want?

Yes, I agree. But not on free-to-air television where everybody else is forced to watch it as well.

Nobody’s forced to watch it, surely?

The point is it’s on free-to-air television.

But nobody’s forced to watch it.

I know, I know. But young people are drawn to it.

So you’re asking for censorship of TV content?

No. We’re asking for decency and responsibility. We live in a country where 50000 women are raped every year, 25000 children are sexually molested, by the very same adults watching the porn on e.tv so that they can get inflamed with lust and go out and rape somebody.

Are you saying there’s a link between nudity and morality?

No, not nudity.

But you’re saying nudity leads to porn?

If you put a strip show on free-to-air television and young people are exposed to it, it piques their interest and leads to harder porn.

So you are saying there is a link between nudity and morality?

I don’t understand.

Would we be a more moral society if there were no nudity?

We’d be a more moral society if women weren’t portrayed as sex objects on national television.

So we’d be a more moral, decent society if there were no porn?

I think we’d be a more moral and decent society, yes.

No porn was allowed under apartheid. Did that make us a more moral and decent society?

We didn’t have the rapes of women and children like we have today.

So you’re saying we were a more moral, decent society under apartheid?

No, I’m saying . you see, after apartheid was abolished we went from one extreme to the other. Nudity and porn and all these things were allowed. And now we see that sexual abuse of women and children has skyrocketed. I believe porn played a huge role in that.